Just Say Yes

Opportunities are always coming your way, whether you're aware of them or not. It may be tempting sometimes to tell yourself that you're not really in the mood to do much today, but I've found, and I enjoy talking about this whole 'Yes Man' thing, that you feel much better about yourself when you say yes to things rather than stay home and do nothing. The feeling of regret you may feel from having not 'participated' far outweighs any small chance of you feeling bored or 'out of place' or whatever. Take this week for example, I went to participate in my usual laparoscopy research booking (testing out laparoscopy in 3D basically), and in the few hours I had to spare afterwards (not that I'm particularly surgically-skilled or anything), I had to decide whether or not I wanted to go to an 'iftar with the homeless' event I was invited to via facebook. Meh, I thought why not, so I walked around London for a bit (awesome in itself), then shared some food with some homeless people, made some really cool friends, and was interviewed for a documentary for the main TV channel in Finland! And to think I could've just gone home. Then a similar event happened a couple of days later, where there were even more cool people! In fact, this past couple of weeks, I've been invited to things left right and centre by different friends, resulting in me having iftar at a different place (Birmingham included) every day, and I've enjoyed every moment alhamdulillah. I haven't even let fasting get in the way of playing football with complete strangers (Football Beyond Borders people), in amazing weather, three hours every week.

So I'm basically writing this to the future Yasin. If you're reading this, which you probably aren't, because you have this thing of feeling really embarrassed by reading your old stuff, just flipping say yes. Doors are opening all the time for you; it's just up to you to realise they've opened for a reason, and walk through them.